Arseny Sukhanov

Arseni on the move (1654), drawing by OM Grosse, 1960s

Arseni (Russian Арсений , secular name Anton Putilowitsch Sukhanov , Антон Путилович Суханов , * around 1600 in Spityno near Pskow ; † 1668 in Moscow ) was a Russian Orthodox monk.

He made several trips to the Orient and founded a collection of Greek manuscripts in the spiritual library in Moscow.

Life

youth

Anton was a son of the impoverished nobleman Putila Yelisaryevich Sukhanov. He spent part of his youth in Tula . He became a monk in Kolomna at an early age and took the spiritual name Arseni. Arseni enjoyed an extensive education. He was taught the ancient arts of grammar, rhetoric and dialectic ( trivium ) and learned Greek , Latin and Polish . This training could have taken place at one of the West Russian brotherhoods.

After moving to Moscow, Arseni became archdeacon and personal secretary of Patriarch Philaret in 1633 .

to travel

1637-1640 he accompanied the voivode of Putywl , Prince Fyodor Volkonsky, on a trip to the ruler Teimuras I of Kakheti (in today's Georgia) and distinguished himself there through great diplomatic skills.

In 1649 he traveled to Constantinople on behalf of the Moscow Patriarch Joseph and Tsar Alexei with the Jerusalem Patriarch Paisios and a delegation to study the customs of the local Orthodox Church. He traveled on to Jassy , returned to Moscow and went to Mount Athos for the first time . In December 1650 he returned from there and wrote a book about his travel experiences, customs and habits of the local residents, climate, vegetation, city fortifications and other things.

In February 1651 he set out on another trip to Constantinople and Jerusalem and on the way there happened to be in the Ukraine in the footsteps of an alleged tsar's son Ivan Vasilyevich Shuisky. On behalf of Tsar Alexei, he negotiated with the Cossack hetman Bohdan Khmelnyzkyj about his extradition and on this occasion discussed questions of a possible annexation of the Cossack territories to Russia. In May he traveled on to Greece and Egypt , visited Mount Sinai and Jaffa and stayed for a few weeks in Cairo, where he had intensive talks with Patriarch Ioannikios of Alexandria . He stayed in Jerusalem for seven months , where he got into a heated argument with Patriarch Paisios. He traveled back to Constantinople and returned to Moscow in June 1653, where he reported to Tsar Alexei and Patriarch Nikon about his travels and diplomatic talks. He wrote several essays about his travel experiences.

Journey to Acquire Manuscripts

In 1654 he went on another trip to Constantinople and Mount Athos to acquire Orthodox manuscripts for the reforms of Patriarch Nikon. He had a sum of money of around 50,000 rubles and returned after two years with over 700 mostly Greek manuscripts. These went to the Synodal Library of the Patriarchate and formed its most valuable collection of Graeca until 1922.

Last years

He became cellar of the Trinity Monastery of Sergiev Posad . In 1661 he took over the management of the printer's yard in Moscow. In January 1665 he returned from his last trip from Jerusalem with a model of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher . After this, the Church of the Resurrection was built in the New Jerusalem Monastery near Moscow.

Arseni died in Moscow on August 14, 1668. He is buried in the cemetery in the Trinity Monastery of Sergiev Posad.

literature

• Vassa Larin: The Byzantine Hierarchical Divine Liturgy in Arsenij Suxanov's Proskinitarij (Orientalia Christiana Analecta 286). PIO, Roma 2010. ISBN 978-88-7210-370-8

Web links

• Биография Арсения Суханова
• Мальцев Л.А. Арсений Суханов: паломник, писатель, библиофил // Слово.ру: Балтийский акцент. 2012. № 2. С.111-114.